


Corners in the Dark

by blueink3



Series: Tumblr Prompts [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, Forgiveness, Hope, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 05:10:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7300807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueink3/pseuds/blueink3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Before you do anything you might regret, um, one question. Just one question...' </p>
<p>The easy out of a joke briefly flashes across his brain before he shuts it down. John Watson deserves more than that. So much more. </p>
<p>Or, what if Sherlock had held his tongue that night at the Landmark and tried a different approach?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Corners in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: What would have happened if Sherlock hadn't tried to make mustache jokes to make John laugh at the restaurant in TEH? Would he have cried? Tried to answer John's question honestly? Just frozen? And what would John have done next?

_Expectant father. Bow tie. Waitress – ah, waiter._

_Waiter is good._

_Glasses. Fake mustache. Identical menu. French accent._

_John. John. John. John._

_"... like a face from ze past."_

_"Great. I'll have that one please."_

_John doesn't look at him. John doesn't see him._

_Waiter is not good. Waiter was a horrible idea._

Sherlock goes to collect the champagne, heart thumping at a rate he can't possibly sustain. The bottle is cold and sweaty in his clammy hand and he pauses by the bottom of the staircase and watches with an increasingly hollow feeling in his chest.

There is a ring. There is a woman. 

He did not prepare for this eventuality.

_Into battle._

"Sir, I think you'll find zis vintage exceptionally to your liking. It has all the qualities of the old with some of the color of the new." 

_It's me. Still me._

"No, sorry, not now please."

_Don't stop. Plough on._

"Like a gaze from a crowd of strangers, suddenly one is aware of staring into the face of an old... friend." 

The accent falls away. The glasses come off. 

"Look, seriously. Could you just..." 

John looks up. Sherlock doesn't breathe. 

"Interesting thing, a tuxedo..." he begins as John glances at the woman as if to make sure that, yes, she sees him too. "... Lends distinction to friends and anonymity to waiters." 

John's face crumples and he looks down before pushing away from the table none too gracefully, sending the half-full water glasses clinking. 

"John, what is it? What...?" the woman asks.

'Well, the short version,” Sherlock interrupts. This doesn’t concern her. “Not. Dead." 

A million things pass across John's beautiful (even with the mustache) face. A million wonderful, horrible things.

This might have been a colossal mistake. 

"Bit mean springing it on you like that, I know," he grasps, clutching his hands tighter in front of him, fingers twisting. "Could have given you a heart attack. Probably still will. In my defense, it was very funny." No it wasn't. John stares. Sherlock panics. "Okay, it's not a great defense." 

"Oh no, you're – ," she breathes. 

"Oh yes." 

"Oh my God." 

"Not quite." 

"You died, you jumped off a roof." 

"No."

"You're dead." 

"No. I'm quite sure I checked." _Please stop talking._  "Excuse me." 

His hand shakes minutely as he dips the napkin into the glass and wipes the ridiculous makeup off of his face.

"Does, uh, does yours rub off too?" He internally groans, even as the words leave his mouth. The woman’s voice condemns him in the air as he tries to shut her out. 

"Oh my God, oh my God. Do you have any idea what you've done?" 

_Yes, thank you. Panic more. Backtrack._

"Okay, John, I'm suddenly realizing I probably owe you some sort of an apology – "

John's fist pounds the tabletop and Sherlock stops talking. Any reaction, though, is better than the cold silence he had been left with.

"Two years – " John wheezes, inhaling shakily. "Two years, hm? I thought..." he trails off, the barely suppressed emotion waging a war with his stiff British upper lip. "I though you were dead. Hm?" He breathes. He blinks. "Now you let me grieve. How could you do that? _How_?"

_Before you do anything you might regret, um, one question. Just one question..._

The easy out of a joke briefly flashes across his brain before he shuts it down. John Watson deserves more than that. So much more. 

"I..." but he trails off because what can he say? John is right. (He’s always right.) How could he possibly have done this to him? But the answer is as easy as it is complicated: "To save you," he blurts and he's not sure if it's those words in particular or if anything that came out of his mouth would have prompted John's fist to collide rather spectacularly with his cheekbone.

The posh room spins for a moment, before he rights himself to face judgment under John's cold fury. The shorter man is breathing harshly through his nose and shaking his hand, unable to meet Sherlock's gaze. 

The maître d hovers just on the edge of his peripheral vision along with two busboys, ready to intervene and haul them out of the restaurant by their collars should the need arise.

"I deserved that," he murmurs, pressing the tips of his fingers to his already swelling cheek. "Deserved a lot more." 

"Goddamn right,” John growls, but his voice breaks. There are tears in his eyes yet they do not fall.

Something large and thick lodges itself in Sherlock’s throat. He tries to swallow around it and finds he can’t. This must be what regret feels like.

“Gentlemen…” the maître d begins as he cautiously approaches.

“Yes, we’re going,” John agrees before they’re even asked. He digs for his wallet, but Sherlock has his card out before John can even wrestle his from his pocket.

He just ruined his proposal dinner and quite possibly gave him the shock of his life. The least he can do is pay for the man’s meal.

John doesn’t say anything as he watches the waiter return Sherlock’s card. He remains silent even as Sherlock pulls off the black bow tie and returns it to the gentleman from whom he stole it as they make their way out the door.

The wind is bitter as it nips as his tender cheek, but he turns into it, relishing the pain. John is pacing the pavement like a caged animal as the woman, whoever she is, stands quietly by the restaurant’s entrance, like a patient sentry.

“John – ” Sherlock begins, because anything would be better than this hateful silence, but John shakes his head.

“Not yet, Sh – ” he cuts himself off and only then does Sherlock realize that John hasn’t said his name. _Cannot_ say his name.

Oh God, what has he done to the man?

_You know exactly what you did._

But still… John said ‘not yet.’ Not ‘not _now_.’ There’s hope in those three letters.

John continues to pace, pinching the bridge of his nose and thrumming with an agonized energy that is absolutely earned as Sherlock recalls with sudden clarity the last words John ever said to him:

_“Let me come through. Let me come through please. No, he’s my friend. He’s my friend. Please.” Cold hands around his wrist. A nonexistent pulse under those fingers. “Please let me just… Oh Jesus no… God no.”_

He’s brought back from those morbid memories by John asking, ”Can you give us a minute?”

At first, he thinks the question is directed at him, but then he realizes that John is looking at the woman and Sherlock has never felt relief like this in his life. A minute. John is giving him a minute.

The woman glances between them. “I don’t think that’s a good – ”

“Mary, _please_.”

Ah. Mary, then. Boring name.

“I’ll meet you at home,” he reiterates and Sherlock soars. There’s a big difference between needing a minute and meeting at home. Mary seems to know that too as she frowns, but acquiesces.

But then something sharp and ugly twists within him as John’s words echo again. He said, “home.” Home is not Baker Street. Home is not with Sherlock. Home is not _them_.

Not anymore.

John flags down a cab for Mary and kisses her on the cheek. Sherlock looks away and tells himself it’s to give them privacy, but really he just can’t bear the thought of those lips on that cheek.

The cab drives off and Sherlock remains staring at the pavement, listening to John come closer until the tips of his shoes are visible in his gaze. 

“I should hit you again.”

“You’re welcome to,” he murmurs and John scoffs, but it gets stuck in his throat. Not a thought that appeals then. Sherlock must admit that his already battered body is grateful for the reprieve.

He finally glances up and finds John staring at him – well and truly studying him – and he wonders if this is what people feel like when his deductive reasoning is aimed in their direction.

“Not here,” John murmurs, abruptly turning on his heel and marching down the block. Sherlock follows a pace behind, for once happy to let the Army doctor lead.

They pass ten minutes in silence, John steadily making his way down Marylebone towards Regent’s Park, head lowered, hands in pockets, with Sherlock following, wishing on every star in the shockingly clear sky that he knew what John was thinking.

He can tell what he’s feeling, sure enough, just by the hunch of his shoulders and the steadiness of his pace: anger, confusion, pain. But Sherlock would give anything to know what he was planning on doing next because if John were to turn suddenly and banish Sherlock from his life, he knows deep in the very marrow of his bones that that’s one exile he would not survive.

They reach the edge of the park, closed for the evening, but John heads inside anyway (rules be damned) and takes a seat on the nearest bench, back straight, feet firmly planted. Sherlock hovers for a moment before taking a seat as well, far enough away on the opposite end that the metal arm is digging into his sore ribs.

The city hums around them, ignorant of the cataclysmic shift happening in its very heart. Sherlock sits as if on a precipice, awaiting the gavel of John’s judgment to come down and find him infinitely wanting.

“What were you saving me from?” is what John asks instead, his gaze staring ahead at nothing in particular in the distance.

“Sorry?” Sherlock blinks in the darkness, the previous long period of silence leaving him momentarily disoriented.

“You said, ‘To save you.’ Back at the restaurant, when I asked how you could do… that. What were you saving me from?”

Oh. In the midst of everything that had happened, Sherlock didn’t exactly expect that particular point to stick.

He clears his throat and squeezes his hands together, because he hadn’t exactly prepped for this. For a man who thought jumping out of a cake might be amusing, he didn’t expect, didn’t _realize_ , the damage he had done.

So he clears his throat again, and begins:

“Moriarty killed himself on the roof, but not before telling me that there were three snipers trained on the three people that I hold most dear.” He hears John inhale but the man, blessedly, remains quiet. “Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade… and you.” He glances down at his shoes and grips his hands tighter. “If I didn’t jump, you would have been shot. I tried to send you away, but you’re clever. Always so clever. You weren’t… you weren’t supposed to see. You weren’t supposed to be there.”

John turns and looks at him then, but Sherlock cannot return the favor. Not yet. Not until he gets control over the cacophony of things he’s feeling.

“John, leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” It becomes true, even as he says it, because only now that they’re reunited does he realize just how much of himself John took with him when Sherlock left him behind.

But then the real truth comes:

“Topped only possibly by this moment, because I naively thought we’d go back to the way things were and I’m quickly realizing that was never something I would have been afforded. Not after what I’ve done.”

In one last burst of bravery, he looks up then – and John’s expression absolutely levels him. His eyes are wide and lost, his lips are parted, and his brow holds the slightest crease. He’s staring at Sherlock as if only now will he let himself believe that this evening hasn’t been one long fever dream.

John lifts his hand, as if to reach out and make sure the man is real, but he freezes, palm hovering in the space between them that seems so much bigger than it is. John glances from his outstretched fingers to Sherlock's face, and it takes every ounce of restraint Sherlock has to not lean forward and do the work for him. 

“Are you really here?” John breathes, eyes filling with tears again.

“Yes,” Sherlock quietly but fiercely replies, grabbing John’s wrist and placing it on his cheek. The tears spill over as John’s thumb brushes over the skin he split less than an hour ago, and Sherlock doesn’t dare close his eyes lest he miss a single detail.

No, this moment will be stored in his mind palace in a place of honor, burned into his brain, seared into his retinas, for all of his remaining days.

And only then does Sherlock realize that there’s still one thing left to say. Perhaps the most important thing, for now, that will ever leave his lips –

“God, John, I’m so sorry,” he sobs, but John is already pulling him across the bench and into his arms, chest heaving in matching tears as he buries his face in Sherlock’s neck.

Sherlock clutches him tightly, feeling John’s tears soak his shirt and not caring in the slightest. He smells that combination of fabric softener, aftershave, and _John_ that used to haunt his dreams in dark, far off places. A phantom specter sent to torment.

But it’s not a specter anymore. John has opened the door wide and thrown light on every shadow in Sherlock’s corners.

It’s by no means the end. They have a long way to go and many things to discuss, not the least of which is the ring box currently digging into Sherlock’s chest where it rests in John’s jacket pocket. But it’s a start.

Still, he never has been able to help himself:

“You really must do something about that mustache,” he murmurs as it bristles against his sensitive skin and John chuckles.

“Shut up, you wanker.”

Sherlock smiles and holds him tighter, resting his cheek on top of John’s head. And only then does he allow his eyes to close, safe in the knowledge that John’s forgiveness will light his dark corners for all the days to come.


End file.
